Task 1 Synopsis

Preface

The following synopsis documents the influences by recognised artists and declarative and procedural knowledge and skills acquisition processes of a pre-service teacher in the development and creation of an original art work designed to portray the issue of male mental health.

Synopsis

My artistic appreciation and creative skills lay in music, photography and audio-visual production prior to the commencement of this course. Before engaging fully in the techniques and understandings of visual art, I became engrossed in the creative process of individuals whose work I have appreciated through my life. Gaugin’s quote that “art is either plagiarism or revolution’ resounded in musician Paul Kelly’s demonstration to Andrew Denton of the evolution of a ‘signature’ piece of his work having evolved from a similarly arranged musical composition by a band from the 1960s. Reflection on my existing tastes in art revealed a preference for indigenous Australian art and  ‘street art’ or at least art produced by people I either knew or could identify with as ‘real’ people, whereby their work provided insights as to their thinking and inspirations. A common thread that emerged amongst my preferences was art that was either derived from, or expressed, emotional calm or disquiet.

As the course progressed my learning took the form of in-class experimentation with materials and application techniques, reflection on and analysis of past experiments as well as research and understanding of arts movements and the artists who created and contributed to them. From the CQU intranet Moodle site the Arts Movement Directory provided a comprehensive listing of the existing, recognised art movements and an accurate timeline of their evolution. This course resource provided an enormous data bank of images and background information on the artists who created the featured works. Some of the images are reproduced on my arts blog site and I hereby acknowledge the resource and the moodle site as the sources of the information and images.

Art movements that captured my imagination were the surrealists and abstract expressionists. Of the surrealists, Dali and Picasso were the most interesting to me. Dali, whose work of the thirties in line with the surrealist’s ideology, attempted to describe the unconscious. The ‘dream like’ distortions to surrealism and strong rich colours are the most striking aspects of his work. Picasso is the most intriguing and enigmatic of the early abstract expressionists. From his ‘blue period’ from 1901 to 1904 where he expressed melancholy and pathos through the use of restricted colour and simplified forms, Picasso was an innovator of new styles such as hermetic and synthetic cubism and worked in classical styles influenced by ballet. Around 1925 his figurative compositions became grotesque and violently active with a tinge of the macabre exemplified by his 1936 ‘Guernica’ Biography Channel (2012). It was the artist’s own statement and art critic’s analyses of the Guernica that initiated my personal intense interest and appreciation of this work.

Through further research into the abstract expressionist movement I found a growing interest in the works of Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.  I was familiar with Jackson’s Blue Poles for its purchase by the Australian National Gallery in controversial circumstances in 1973. Pollock, suffering from alcoholism, had tragically died in a car he was driving in 1956. The cost of the work was above the authority limit of the gallery director and was personally approved by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Of greater relevance however was the unique creative style of Pollock known as the ‘drip and splash’ style. Fixing his canvas to the floor or wall and, holding the brush or stick a foot or more away, threw lines of paint towards it, allowing chance to direct the evolution of the painting. He then manipulated the paint with an assortment of instruments, sometimes achieving textured effects using elements such as sand or broken glass MoMA (2010).   

In contrast to Pollock’s ‘action style’ is the brooding melancholic style of fellow expressionist Mark Rothko. Rothko was a gifted academic studying at Yale in the 1920s and a man with strong radical tendencies maintaining he was an anarchist his entire life Tate (2010). In 1935 Rothko and Gottleib founded ‘The Ten’, a group of artists that favoured expressionist styles over the more abstract techniques of the Americans. His contrasts were carefully chosen to in order to convey a wide range of human emotions from foreboding and despair to hope and rapture. After a life of severe depression Rothko committed suicide by slashing his wrists in his studio.

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) was an abstract expressionist, influenced by Cezanne and Picasso and who in turn paved the way and influenced both Pollock and Rothko. A common thread emerged between all three abstract expressionists, in that they had suffered from depression and died either as a result of self harm or prematurely from life style disease. Another similarity I had noted was the use of French curves in their work either in direct or abstract form. French curves had taken my interest in my developing art skills and being the month of ‘Movember’ and with these researched artists being sufferers of depression, I elected my contemporary issue as male mental health.

Planning the artwork was an interesting process in itself. Being informed by the sound advice of allowing divergent thinking or ‘not closing options’ too quickly, I drew inspiration from Pollock’s style and elected to allow chance to direct the evolution of the work. I was aware that a characteristic of abstract expressionist work was the sometime inordinate size of their art works and decided to use a triptych effect involving three canvases. A fascination with French curves for the smooth and elegantly flowing use of line would be incorporated in someway and I elected to portray the mixed emotions of depression by sharply contrasting colours against each other. These were the majority of the very few conscious decisions I made in the creation of the work.

A course lecture experience with instillation art and recollections of a previous example from far north Queensland informed the next evolutionary stage of the work. Combined with a growing recognition of an element of the macabre in artwork which leaves the viewer with strong lasting impressions, I began to ideate on ways to incorporate both elements into the final work. I just happened to have a surgical device used in radiation therapy for throat cancer lying around in a cupboard and decided to integrate it into the work along with wooden chips painted in analogous colours to add texture and depth to one of the canvases. Learning experiences occurred during the creation of the first canvas as to selection of contaminate free work environments (oils don’t like rain!) and, resisting the temptation to keep adding to a work without taking proper time to evaluate the previous results and effects. During this phase the ‘chance’ element took control of the direction of the work with the colours and brushwork being applied in accordance with whatever emotions I was experiencing over a 3 day period. Decisions, as such, as to the form and composition were more a matter of ‘impulse’ without deliberate thought as this was the effect I was trying to create with the work.

The surgical mask device was sown to a canvas prepared in a tranquil green and a canvas with sharply contrasting colours swirling and rising from pools of calm blue was attached to the larger central canvas supporting the mask. The joined canvases were supported upright using a guitar stand, the neck cradle of which provided two ‘eyes’ in the hollow sockets of the mask. A third canvas depicting two ‘happy’ figures in abstract portrays the optimal positive outcome of depression from confusion and angst, through recognition and therapeutic management to the place where men are happy to recognise and discuss their affliction positively. The analogous colours of the chips and shapes represent the turmoil of depression being ever-present however, in a deeper, smaller, more manageable place.

Such was the creation of ‘The Black Dog’

 

References

Alley, R., (1981) Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.657. Retrieved from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/mark-rothko-1875/text-artist-biography

CQUniversity Australia. (2012). EDED11452- Visual Learning and Innovation. Moodle resource. Retrieved from: http://www.articons.co.uk/dali.htm

CQUniversity Australia. (2012). EDED11452- Visual Learning and Innovation.Moodle resource. Retrieved from: http://www.articons.co.uk/picasso.htm

Pablo Picasso. (2012). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 07:26, Dec 13, 2012, from http://www.biography.com/people/pablo-picasso-9440021.

MoMA (2012) Retrieved from: http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/123/687

Wikipedia (2012). Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock